Salt therapy: A cure for breathing and skin problems?

February 10, 2012|By Lois K. Solomon, Staff writer

Floridians have easy access to the beach, but some people with allergies and lung conditions say they need even saltier air to clean them out.

At spas opening up in Florida and throughout the country, clients sit in special rooms infused with high concentrations of salt. They say it opens up their sinuses, drains mucus, reduces swelling of the bronchial tubes and boosts their immune systems.

Patients with conditions such as asthma, sinusitis, headaches, eczema and cystic fibrosis are going in for regular treatments.

"I come in just to breathe," said Annette Cidoni, 30, who visits The Salt Suite in Delray Beach twice a week. Cidoni gets sinus headaches and is allergic to trees, dust, mold and numerous foods. "You can feel a difference. You feel energized the next day."

For hundreds of years in Eastern Europe, salt therapy has been considered therapeutic. Observers noticed that workers in salt caves in Poland, Russia and Slovakia rarely suffered from colds or respiratory diseases. In recent years, several salt spas have opened in the United States; in Florida, there are spas in Naples and Orlando and now in Delray Beach.

Many people use salt as a curative for an assortment of conditions. Some rinse their sinuses with saline solutions. They bathe their sore muscles in epsom salts. Some spas buff clients with a salty scrub to regenerate the skin and cleanse the lymphatic system.

At the Salt Suite, visitors inhale salt-infused air from a generator that regulates the size of the particles it releases depending on a patient's condition. Someone can relax in white leather lounge chairs, do yoga or play in the children's playroom, surrounded by salt-covered walls and salt-sprinkled floors. The spa imported 24,000 pounds of salt from the Dead Sea, a tourist destination for its therapeutic effects against arthritis, allergies and skin conditions, said Jessica Helmer, Salt Suite co-owner.

Some studies show benefits to breathing concentrated salted air. A 2006 New England Journal of Medicine report showed that cystic fibrosis patients who inhaled a salty mist improved their lung function.

Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, said there is too little evidence to be certain of salt's effects on breathing conditions.

"Breathing in salt gets the body to excrete excess liquid and loosens up mucus," Edelman said. "So it's not outlandish, but there's no evidence."

People who rave about the benefits of inhaling salt may simply experience wishful thinking, he said.

"Asthma patients are very sensitive to the placebo effect," he said. "They want to be better."

Jennifer Leo, of Boynton Beach, thinks her daughters' improved breathing is not an illusion. She said Addison, 2, and Brianna, 8 months, had constant runny noses and congestion until they started visiting the Salt Suite kids' playroom twice a week.

"I'm so glad I found something I don't have to go to a doctor for," Leo said. "I haven't had to bring them for a nebulizer treatment in two months, and they sleep better."

Barbara Weiner, of Boca Raton, said she had become a pariah for her constant coughing due to pneumonia and a collapsed lung in 2006. Her cough initially became worse when she started salt treatments three months ago, which she was told is normal, but it has since disappeared, she said. She credits her twice-a-week sessions.

"I used to cough every few words," said Weiner, 66. "I don't want the cough to come back. It makes everyone walk away."